PhD Health@TPM Resilience

Following COVID-19, the World Health Organisation (WHO) made policy recommendations for increasing health systems resilience and pointed to the importance of addressing resilience in all aspects of the healthcare system, including re-designing policies, protocols and services, and the importance of considering safety in healthcare delivery. Such system and institutional changes require design methods which take into account the complex multi-stakeholder environment.

While the resilience of health systems at a national level came into focus during COVID-19, less attention has been given to how we achieve health systems resilience at the regional (city, municipality, etc.) level. And yet the WHO has emphasised the important role of actors in the regional level of health systems, including, but not limited to, general practice, communities, pharmacies, and, in low-resource settings, community health workers.

Understanding how such local systems can become more resilient, both in terms of handling local shocks and stressors and in terms of being able to cope with wider systemic or even global impacts on health systems, is a considerable task. A first fundamental challenge is the lack of academic studies that study underlying health system processes.

For instance, the academic literature on health system resilience tends to focus on developing indicators related to outcomes, but processes tend to be more important when it comes to measuring safety or the capacity to cope with sudden change, where workforces must also be resilient and when considerations of how local, national and international levels of a health system interact. Furthermore, understanding the dynamics between local and national interactions and actors are required.  It is likely that different indicators for resilience ought to be used at different levels: indicating what undermines or strengthens a system at the local level is likely to differ from and yet interact with indicators of the same at higher levels. Consequently, further work and research is needed to understand which processes are associated with resilience or health system performance outcomes, how local system concerns ought to be addressed, and which new methods for measuring these ought to be adopted. We welcome PhD projects and proposals that focus on the challenges raised above, with the aim to contribute to our understanding of how best to measure a healthcare system's resilience while taking into consideration the impact of such measurements on, for example, how we can ensure fairness, sustainability, and adequate responsibility arrangements.

The specific question of interest for this project concerns the role of community-resilience indicators in regional and higher levels of assessing health system resilience, thereby connecting the challenges raised earlier. The selected candidate may choose to focus on particular aspects for comparison, such as the workforce or citizen-led initiatives in times of crisis, and will be expected to work with empirical methods and data as well as value theory and methods in applied ethics, as part of a multidisciplinary team.

• MSc or equivalent in any social science discipline or demonstrable experience with qualitative research methods;
• Experience in working alongside quantitative researchers in multi-disciplinary environments;
• Demonstrable expertise in applied ethics and/or value-theory.

Doing a PhD at TU Delft requires English proficiency at a certain level to ensure that the candidate is able to communicate and interact well, participate in English-taught Doctoral Education courses, and write scientific articles and a final thesis. For more details please check the Graduate Schools Admission Requirements.

Doctoral candidates will be offered a 4-year period of employment in principle, but in the form of 2 employment contracts. An initial 1,5 year contract with an official go/no go progress assessment within 15 months. Followed by an additional contract for the remaining 2,5 years assuming everything goes well and performance requirements are met.

Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities, increasing from € 2541 per month in the first year to € 3247 in the fourth year. As a PhD candidate you will be enrolled in the TU Delft Graduate School. The TU Delft Graduate School provides an inspiring research environment with an excellent team of supervisors, academic staff and a mentor. The Doctoral Education Programme is aimed at developing your transferable, discipline-related and research skills.

The TU Delft offers a customisable compensation package, discounts on health insurance and sport memberships, and a monthly work costs contribution. Flexible work schedules can be arranged. For international applicants we offer the Coming to Delft Service and Partner Career Advice to assist you with your relocation.

Delft University of Technology is built on strong foundations. As creators of the world-famous Dutch waterworks and pioneers in biotech, TU Delft is a top international university combining science, engineering and design. It delivers world class results in education, research and innovation to address challenges in the areas of energy, climate, mobility, health and digital society. For generations, our engineers have proven to be entrepreneurial problem-solvers, both in business and in a social context.

At TU Delft we embrace diversity as one of our core values and we actively engage to be a university where you feel at home and can flourish. We value different perspectives and qualities. We believe this makes our work more innovative, the TU Delft community more vibrant and the world more just. Together, we imagine, invent and create solutions using technology to have a positive impact on a global scale. That is why we invite you to apply. Your application will receive fair consideration.

Challenge. Change. Impact!

With its excellent education and research at the intersection of technology, society and policy, the Faculty of TPM makes an important contribution to solving complex technical-social issues, such as energy transition, mobility, digitalisation, water management and (cyber) security. We combine insights from the engineering sciences, the social and the humanities. We develop robust models and designs, are internationally oriented and have an extensive network with knowledge institutions, companies, social organisations and governments.

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